CVE-2025-5197: Hugging Face Transformers ReDoS in TensorFlow to PyTorch weight name conversion

Summary

A Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) flaw exists in the Hugging Face Transformers library, in the `convert_tf_weight_name_to_pt_weight_name()` function that converts TensorFlow weight names to PyTorch format. Its regex pattern `/[^/]*___([^/]*)/` can be driven into catastrophic backtracking by crafted input strings, consuming excessive CPU. The flaw affects versions up to 4.51.3 and can cause service disruption, resource exhaustion and potential API service vulnerabilities during model conversion.

Mitigation

Fixed in version 4.53.0.

Affected packages in the Exposure Registry

Matched by package name and ecosystem. Each entry shows whether the package delegates to a language model and how many tracked packages depend on it.

• transformersPyPILLM dependency since 2016-08-17 · 141 tracked dependents

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